This letter is from a Kennedy Catholic High School (KCHS) student who requested anonymity. At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, Kennedy Catholic HS in Burien changed their cell phone policy, making it a “phone-free” campus. This student reports on the surprising results, calling cell phone usage “perhaps the greatest challenge” to this generation.
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By: Kennedy Catholic Student
Technology has gotten to a point where it is stronger than our self-control.
Following suit with other high schools across the country, Kennedy Catholic is a cell phone-free campus as of the 2024-2025 school year. Years of attempts to mitigate classroom distractions, lack of engagement, and cheating culminated in an announcement that was met with collective grief and booing from the student body.
As a student who is regularly disheartened by the ever-increasing percentages of their weekly screen time report, I will be the first to admit that this change was hard, like really hard. The phone is a magical, horrible device that provides a quiet escape from life and uncomfortable social interactions, opening the door to a world of limitless entertainment. We all knew phones were becoming a problem.
Unfortunately, it has taken shocking statistics, like the fact that the average teen spends over seven hours on their phone per day, for people to wake up. I didn’t even realize how much this small metal device allowed me to disassociate from my day.
Don’t know the new kids at your table? Phone.
Class is boring? Phone.
Waiting in line for mediocre cafeteria food? Phone.
Burdened by the weight of life and uncertainty of your future? Phone.
Going on the phone is easier in the short term, but every missed connection and every feeling you suppress is a little moment that you will never, ever get back.
So, the first few weeks were uncomfortable, like getting in a swimming pool after being in the hot tub. But soon, I realized that the swimming pool was better than I could have imagined. Our school feels like a 90’s movie now. I thinkI’ve met more people this year than the last three years combined. For the first time, I feel like I’m living every day of my life completely consciously. It was hard at first to come to terms with the fact that these changes were happening because phones were no longer out in the classroom. So, after a few months of the phone ban, I would argue that it’s one of the best decisions the Kennedy Catholic High School administration has made in a long time. That, and finally making sure the bathroom stalls stay closed.
While all of these changes are indeed positive, there are certainly drawbacks. Unfortunately, we live in the age of school shootings, bomb threats, and school intruder drills. There have been multiple shooting threats and one school shooting between now and when I began writing this article. It is a very real concern that students may not be able to contact their families with some of the stricter anti-cell phone policies.
Thankfully, at Kennedy the student may keep their phone on their person, provided they do not have it out in the main building. However, some [other] schools require students to completely surrender their phones at the beginning of the day, and seeing that there have already been 23 school shootings reported in 2024, that may be too extreme for the times we live in.
The cell phone ban is a temporary solution to what is perhaps the greatest challenge of this generation. Technology has taken control of our lives and run with it to the point that we cannot possibly catch up without seriously changing the way we interact with it. The magic of electronic devices has long since worn off and left us with the ugly truth that it is certainly diminishing our quality of life and the way we exist in the world.
I believe the Kennedy cell phone ban is a positive change, and I hope that it will soon become the standard in high schools across the nation. Despite the ridiculous amount of homework I’ve had so far, I think the most important lesson of this year is that maybe Mom was right. It is that damn phone.
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